It is known from, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,168,356 that it is advantageous to transmit compressed video signal in packets, with respective packets including a measure of error correction. Television receivers designed to decompress transmitted packeted compressed video signal may not receive the entire sequence of transmitted packets. In the absence of a packet in the received signal, it is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,276 to insert a media error code in the signal stream for a lost packet, which media error code will condition the decompression circuitry to reset at a predetermined signal entry point at which the decompressor can reliably continue decompression.
Apparatus for performing the inverse packing process, at least for high definition television (HDTV) signals must operate a extremely high speed to process the relatively high data rates of a HDTV signal. The present inventors, in designing inverse packet processors found it extremely difficult to arrange apparatus to include media error codes after detecting that a particular packet had been lost in transmission. The present invention solves the problem of inserting media error codes in a non-complicated manner, without incurring any timing constraints over those constraints associated with simple inverse packet processing.